In a manufacturing environment, such as in a steel industry, the usage of material is dependent upon quality parameters, for example, surface quality. However, traditional methods for manual surface inspection of materials are inadequate and do not guarantee a defect free surface, thereby affecting the quality of the material. Early detection of surface defects can help in reducing the damage to the material as well as bring down the overall cost of manufacturing the material. However, the complex level of application and volume of surface defect data maintained at each level in the manufacturing environment leads to huge operational cost and loss of valuable revenue.
Further, the surface defect data as well as production data are transferred through the same communication channel to the Information Technology (IT) system associated with the manufacturing environment. This leads to increased difficulty in identifying the surface defect data from the production data and increased delay in run-time decision making regarding the manufacturing process. Moreover, transfer of the surface defect data and the production data over the same communication channel also causes tight coupling of the production data with the surface defect data and thereby leads to complexity in maintenance of the data.
Technological advances that allow for appropriate separation of the surface defect data from the production data, faster transfer of the surface defect data to the IT system associated with the manufacturing process, and efficient storage of the surface defect data and the production data for enabling faster run-time decision making are desirable.